The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded

Under these circumstances, the art of letter-writing presented itself to this invention, as a means of accomplishing objects to which other forms of writing did not admit then of being so readily adapted. It offered itself to this invention as a means of conducting certain plots, which inasmuch as they had the weal of men for their object, were necessarily conducted with secresy then. The whole play of that dramatic genius which shaped our great dramatic poems, came out, not on the stage, but in these 'plots' in which the weal of the unborn generations of men was the end; those plots for the relief of man's estate which had to be plotted, like murders and highway robberies, then, by bandits that had watch-words, and 'badges' and signals and private names, and a secret slang of their own.

The minds that conducted this enterprise under these conditions, were minds conscious of powers equal, at least, to those of the Greeks, and who thought they had as good a right to invent new methods of literary communication, or to convert old ones to new uses as the Greeks had in their day.

The speaker for this school was one who could not see why it was not just as lawful for the moderns to 'invent new measures in verses,' at least, as in 'dances,' and why it was not just as competent for him to compose 'supposititious' letters for his purposes, as it was for Thucydides to compose speeches for his; and though eloquence was, in this case, for the most part, dispensed with, these little every-day prosaic unassuming, apparently miscellaneous, scraps of life and business, shewing it up piece-meal as it was in passage, and just as it happened in which, of course, no one would think of looking for a comprehensive design, became, in the hands of this artist, an invention quite as effective as the oratory of the ancient.

The letters which came out on the trial of Essex, in the name of Sir Antony Bacon, but in which the hand of Mr. Francis Bacon appeared without much attempt at disguise, were not the only documents of that kind for which the name of the elder brother, with his more retiring and less 'dangerous' turn of mind, appeared to be, on the whole, the least objectionable. An extensive correspondence, which will tend to throw some light on the contemporary aspect of things when it is opened, was conducted in that gentleman's name, about those days.

But much more illustrious persons, who were forced by the genius of this dramatist into his plots, were induced to lend their names and sanction to these little unobtrusive performances of his, when occasion served. This was a gentleman who was in the habit of writing letters and arranging plots, for quite the most distinguished personages of his time. In fact, his powers were greatly in request for that purpose. For so far as the question of mere ability was concerned, it was found upon experiment, that there was nothing he stopped at. Under a sharp pressure, and when the necessary question of the Play required it, and nothing else would serve, it was found that he could compose 'a sonnet' as well as a state paper, or a decision, or a philosophical treatise. He wrote a sonnet for Essex, addressed to Queen Elizabeth, on one very important occasion. If it was not any better than those attempts at lyrical expression in another department of song, which he has produced as a specimen of his poetical abilities in general, it is not strange that Queen Elizabeth, who was a judge of poetry, should find herself able to resist the blandishments of that effusion. But it was not the royal favourite only, it was not Essex and Buckingham only, who were glad to avail themselves of these so singular gifts, devoted to their use by one who was understood to have no other object in living, but to promote their ends, – one whose vast philosophic aims, – aims already propounded in all their extent and grandeur, propounded from the first, as the ends to which the whole scheme of his life was to be – artistically – with the strong hand of that mighty artist, through all its detail subordinated, were supposed to be merged, lost sight of, forgotten in an irrepressible enthusiasm of devotion to the wishes of the person who happened, at the time, to be the sovereign's favourite; one whose great torch of genius and learning was lighted, as it was understood, – lighted and fed, to light them to their desires. Elizabeth herself, unwilling as she was to add any thing to the powers with which nature had crowned this man, instructed by her instinct, that 'such men were dangerous,' was willing, notwithstanding, to employ his peculiar gifts in services of this nature; and so was her successor. And the historical fact is, that an extraordinary amount of business of one kind and another, passed in consequence through this gentleman's hands in both these reigns, and perhaps no one was ever better qualified by constitutional endowments, and by a predominant tendency to what he calls technically 'active good,' for the dispatch of business in which large and distant results were comprehended. And if in managing plots for these illustrious personages, he conducted them always with stedfast reference to his ulterior aims, – if, in writing letters for them, he wrote them always with the under-tones of his own part, – of his own immortal part that was to survive 'when tyrants' crests and tombs of brass were spent' running through them – if, in composing state papers and concocting legal advice, and legal decisions, he contrived to insert in them an inner meaning, and to point to the secret history which contained their solution, who that knows what those times were, who that knows to what divine ends this man's life was dedicated, shall undertake to blame him for it.

All these papers were written with an eye to publication; thay were written for the future, but they were written in that same secret method, in that same 'cipher' which he has to stop to describe before he can introduce the subject of 'the principal and supreme sciences,' with the distinct assurance that as 'matters stand then, it is an art of great use,' though some may think he introduces it with its kindred arts, in that place, for the sake of making out a muster-roll of the sciences, and to little other purpose, and that trivial as these may seem in such a connexion, 'to those who have spent their labours and studies in them, they seem great matters,' appealing to 'those who are skilful in them' to say whether he has not given, in what he has said of them, 'though in few words,' a proof of his proficiency. This was the method of writing in which not the principal and supreme sciences only, but every thing that was fit to be written at all had need to be written then.

'Ciphers are commonly in letters, but may be in words.' Both these kinds of ciphers were employed in the writings of this school. The reading of that which is 'in letters,' the one in which letters are secretly employed as 'symbols' of esoteric philosophic subtleties, is reserved for those who have found their way into the esoteric chambers of this learning. It is reserved for those who have read the 'Book of Sports and Riddles,' which this school published, and who happen to have it with them when it happens to be called for; it is reserved for those who have circumvented Hamlet, and tracked him to his last lurking place, and plucked out the heart of his mystery; for those who have been in Prospero's Island, and 'untied his spell.' This point gained, – the secret of the cipher 'in letters,' – the secret of 'the symbols,' and other 'devices' and 'conceits' which were employed in this school as a medium of secret philosophic correspondence, the characters in which these men struck through the works they could not own then, the grand colossal symbol of the school, its symbol of universality, large as the world, enduring as the ages of the human kind, and with it —in it, their own particular 'marks' and private signatures, – this mastered, – with the secret of this in our hands, the cipher 'in words' presents no difficulties, When we come to read the philosophical papers of this great firm in letters, with the aid of that discovery, we shall know what one of the partners of it means, when he says, that on 'account of the rawness and unskilfulness of the hands through which they pass, the greatest matters are sometimes carried in the weakest ciphers.'

It was easy, for instance, in defining the position of the favourite in the Court of Queen Elizabeth, in recommending a civil rather than a military greatness as the one least likely to provoke the animosity and suspicion of government under those conditions, in recommending that so far from taking umbrage at the advancement of a rival – the policy of the position prescribed, the deliberate putting forward and sustaining of another favourite to avert the jealousy and fatal suspicion with which, under such conditions, the government regards its favourite, when popularity and the qualities of a military chieftain are combined in him; it was easy in marking out those grand points in the conditions of the chief courtiers' policy at that time, to glance at the position of other men in that same court, seeking for power under those same conditions – men whose position, inasmuch as the immediate welfare of society and the destinies of mankind in future ages were concerned in it, was infinitely more important than that of the person whose affairs were agitated on the surface of the letter.

It was easy, too, in setting forth the conflicting claims of the 'New Company and the Old' to the monopoly of the manufacture and dying of woollens, for instance, to glance at the New Company and the Old whose claims to the monopoly of another public interest, not less important, were coming forward for adjustment just about that time, and urging their respective rights upon the attention of the chief men in the nation.

Or in the discussion of a plan for reforming the king's household, and for reducing its wanton waste and extravagance – in exhibiting the detail of a plan for relieving the embarrassments of the palace just then, which, with the aid of the favourite and his friends, and their measures for relief, were fast urging on the revolution – it was easy to indicate a more extensive reform; it was impossible to avoid a glance, in passing, at the pitifulness of the position of the man who held all men in awe and bondage then; it was impossible to avoid a touch of that same pen which writes elsewhere, 'Beggar and Madman,' too, so freely, – consoling the Monarch with the suggestion that Essex was also greatly in debt at a time when he was much sought after and caressed, and instancing the case of other courtiers who had been in the same position, and yet contrived to hold their heads up.

Under the easy artistic disguise of courtly rivalries and opposing ambitions – under cover, it might be, of an outrageous personal mutual hostility – it was easy for public men belonging to the same side in politics, who were obliged to conduct, not only the business of the state, but their own private affairs, and to protect their own most sacred interests under such conditions, – it was easy for politicians trained in such a school, by the skilful use of such artifices, to play into each other's hands, and to attain ends which in open league they would have been sure to lose; to avert evils, it might be, which it would have been vain and fatal for those most concerned in them openly to resist. To give to a courtier seeking advancement, with certain ulterior aims always in view, the character of a speculator, a scholastic dreamer, unable for practice, unfit to be trusted with state affairs, was not, after all, however pointedly it might be complained of at the time, so fatal a blow as it would have been to direct attention, already sufficiently on the alert, to the remarkable practical gifts with which this same speculator happened, as we all know, to be also endowed. This courtier's chief enemy, if he had been in his great rival's secrets, or if he had reflected at all, might have done him a worse turn than that. The hostilities of that time are no more to be taken on trust than its friendships, and the exaggerated expressions of them, – the over-doing sometimes points to another meaning.

While indicating the legal method of proceeding in conducting the show of a trial, to which 'the man whose fame did indeed fold in the orb o' the world' was to be subjected – a trial in which the decision was known beforehand – 'though,' says our Poet —

'Though well, we may not pass upon his life,Without the form of justice;' —

it was easy for the mean, sycophantic, truckling tool of a Stuart – for the tool of a Stuart's favourite – to insert in such a paper, if not private articles, private readings of passages, interlinings, pointing to a history in that case which has not yet transpired; it was easy for such a one to do it, when the partner of his treasons would have had no chance to criticise his case, or meddle with it.

In this collection of the apparently miscellaneous remains of our great philosopher, there are included many important state papers, and much authentic correspondence with the chief personages and actors of that age, which performed their part at the time as letters and state papers, though they were every one of them written with an inner reference to the position of the writer, and intended to be unfolded eventually with the key of that position. But along with this authentic historical matter, cunningly intermingled with it, much that is 'supposititious,' to borrow a term which this writer found particularly to his purpose – supposititious in the same sense in which the speeches of Thucydides and those of his imitators are suppositious – is also introduced. There is a great deal of fictitious correspondence here, designed to eke out that view of this author's life and times which the authentic letters left unfinished, and which he was anxious, for certain reasons, to transmit to posterity, – which he was forbidden to transmit in a more direct manner. There is a good deal of miscellaneous letter-writing here, and there will be found whole series of letters, in which the correspondence is sustained on both sides in a tolerably lively manner, by this Master of Arts; but under a very meagre dramatic cover in this case, designedly thin, never meant to serve as a cover with 'men of understanding.' Read which side of the correspondence you will in these cases, 'here is his dry hand up and down.'

These fictitious supposititious letters are written in his own name, as often as in another's; for of all the impersonations, ancient and modern, historical and poetic, which the impersonated genius of the modern arts had to borrow to speak and act his part in, there is no such mask, no so deep, thick-woven, impenetrable disguise, as that historical figure to which his own name and person is attached; – the man whom the Tudor and the Stuart admitted to their secrets, – the man whom the Tudor tolerated, whom the Stuart delighted to honor. In his rules of policy, he has left us the most careful directions for the interpretations of the lives of men whose 'impediments' are such, and whose 'natures and ends' are so 'differing and dissonant from the general state of the times in which they live,' that it is necessary for them to avoid 'disclosing themselves,' 'to be in the whole course of their lives close, retired, reserved, as we see in Tiberius, who was never seen at a play,' men who are compelled, as it were, 'to act their lives as in a theatre.' 'The soundest disclosing,' he says, 'and expounding of MEN is by their NATURES and ENDS. The weaker sort of men are best interpreted by their natures, the wisest by their ends.' 'Princes are best interpreted by their natures, private persons by their ends, because princes being at the top of human desires, they have, for the most part, no particular ends whereto they aspire, by distance from which a man might take measure and scale of the rest of their actions and desires' 'Distance from which,' – that is the key for the interpretation of the lives of private persons of certain unusual endowments, who propound to themselves under such conditions 'good and reasonable ends, and such as are within their power to attain.' As to the worthiness of these ends, we have some acquaintance with them already in our own experience. The great leaders of the new movements which make the modern ages – the discoverers of its science of sciences, the inventors of its art of arts, found themselves in an enemy's camp, and the policy of war was the only means by which they could preserve and transmit to us the benefits we have already received at their hands, – the benefits we have yet to receive from them. The story of this Interpreter is sent down to us, not by accident, but by his own design. But it is sent down to us with the works in which the nobility of his nature is all laid open, – in which the end of his ends is constantly declared, and constantly pursued, – it is sent down to us along with the works in which his ends are accomplished, to the times that have found in their experience what they were. He did not think it too much to ask of ages experimentally acquainted with the virtue of the aims for which he made these sacrifices, – aims which he constantly propounded as the end of his large activity, to note the 'dissonance' between that life which the surface of these documents exhibits, – between that historic form, too, which the surface of that time's history exhibits, – and the nature which is revealed in this life-act, – the soul, the never-shaken soul of this proceeding.

'The god of soldiers,With the consent of supreme Jove, informThy thoughts with nobleness; that thou may'st proveThe shame UNVULNERABLE, and stick i' the war Like a great sea-mark, standing every flaw, And saving those that eye thee.'

'I would not, as I often hear dead men spoken of, that men should say of me, he judged, and lived so and so; I knew him better than any. Now, as much as decency permits, I here discover my inclinations and affections. If any observe, he will find that I have either told, or designed to tell all. What I cannot speak, I point out with my finger.' 'There was never greater circumspection and military prudence than is sometimes seen among us' ['Naturalists']. 'Can it be that men are afraid to lose themselves by the way, that they reserve themselves to the end of the game?'

'I mortally hate to be mistaken by those who happen to come across my name. He that does all things for honor and glory, what can he think to gain by showing himself to the world in a mask, and by concealing his true being from the people? If you are a coward, and men commend you for your valour, is it of you that they speak? They take you for another. Archelaus, king of Macedon, walking along the street, somebody threw water on his head, which they who were with him said he ought to punish: "Ay, but," said the other, "he did not throw the water upon me, but upon him whom he took me to be." Socrates being told by the people, that people spoke ill of him, "Not at all," said he; "there is nothing in me of what they say. I am content to be less commended, provided I am better known. I may be reputed a wise man, in such a sort of wisdom as I take to be folly."' – ['The French Interpreter.']

This is the man who never in all his life came into the theatre, content to work behind the scenes, scientifically enlightened as to the true ends of living, and the means of attaining those ends, propounding deliberately his duty as a man, his duty to his kind, his obedience to the law of his higher nature, as his predominant end, – but not to the harm or oppression of his particular and private nature, but to its most felicitous conservation and advancement, – at large in its new Epicurean emancipations, rejoicing in its great fruition, happy in its untiring activities, triumphing over all impediments, celebrating in secret lyrics, its immortal triumphs over 'death and all oblivious enmity,' and finding, 'in the consciousness of good intentions, a more continual joy to nature than all the provision that can be made for security and repose,' – not reconciled to the part he was compelled to play in his own time, – his fine, keen sensibilities perpetually at war with it, – always balancing and reviewing the nice ethical questions it involved, and seeking always the 'nobler' solution. 'The one part have I suffered, the other will I do,' – demonstrating the possibility of making, even under such conditions, a 'life sublime.'

'All places that the eye of heaven visitsAre, to a wise man, ports and happy havens.'

There is no room here for details; but this is the account of this so irreconcileable difference between the Man of these Works and the Man in the Mask, in which he triumphantly achieved them; – this is the account, in the general, which will be found to be, upon investigation, the true one. And the more the subject is studied, even by the light which this work brings to bear upon it, the more the truth of this statement will become apparent.

But though the details are, by the limits of this volume, excluded here, it cannot well close, without one word as to the points in this part of the evidence, which have made the deepest impression on us.

No man suffered death, or mutilation, or torture, or outrage of any kind, under the two tyrannies of this age of learning, that it was possible for this scientific propounder of the law of human kind-ness to avert and protect him from – this anticipator and propounder of a human civilization. He was far in advance of our times in his criticism of the barbarisms which the rudest ages of social experiment have transmitted to us. He could not tread upon a beetle, without feeling through all that exquisite organization which was great nature's gift to her Interpreter in chief, great nature's pang. To anticipate the sovereign's wishes, seeking to divert them first 'with a merry conceit' perhaps; for, so light as that were, the motives on which such consequences might depend then – to forestall the inevitable decision was to arm himself with the powers he needed. The men who were protected and relieved by that secret combination against tyranny, which required, as the first condition of its existence, that its chiefs should occupy places of trust and authority, ought to come out of their graves to testify against the calumnies that blast our modern learning, and the virtue – the virtue of it, at its source. Does any one think that a universal slavery could be fastened on the inhabitants of this island, when wit and manliness are at their height here, without so much as the project of an 'underground railway' being suggested for the relief of its victims? 'I will seek him and privily relieve him. Go you and maintain talk with the Duke that my charity be not of him perceived. If he ask for me, I am ill and gone to bed. Go to; say you nothing. There is division between the Dukes – [between the Dukes] – and a worse matter than that. I have received a letter this night. It is dangerous to be spoken. I have locked the letter in my closet. There is part of a power already FOOTED. We must incline to THE KING. If I die for it, as no less is threatened me, the king, my old master, must be relieved.' That when all is done will be found to contain some hints as to the manner in which 'charities' of this kind have need to be managed, under a government armed with powers so indefinable.

Cassius. And let us awear our resolution.

Brutus. No, not an oath: If not the face of men, The sufferance of our souls, THE TIMES ABUSE, —  If these be motives weak, break off betimes,  And every man hence to his idle bed;  So let high-sighted tyranny range on,  Till each man drop by lottery. But if THESE, —  As I am sure they do, – bear fire enough  To kindle cowards, and to steel with valour  The melting spirits of women, then, countrymen,  What need we any spur but OUR OWN CAUSE  To prick us to redress? what other bond  Than secret Romans, that have spoken the word,  And will not falter…  Swear priests and cowards, and men cautelous,  Old feeble carrions, and such suffering souls  That welcome wrongs; unto bad causes swear  Such creatures as men doubt; but do not stain  The even virtue of our enterprise,  Nor the insuppressive mettle of our spirits,  To think that, or our cause, or our performance,  Did need an oath.'

[Doctrine of the 'secret Romans.']